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Opinion Contributor

Seek the wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew

The U.S. should look to Lee Kuan Yew for guidance on China, the authors write. | AP Photo

Americans frustrated with a do-nothing Congress will find his perspective on governance particularly penetrating. “A successful democratic society,” Lee Kuan Yew says, requires two things: a constantly active, “interested and vigilant electorate” and “the ablest, the toughest and most dedicated of leaders.” In his view, the U.S. today deserves failing marks on both fronts.

More controversially for Americans, Lee challenges prevailing Western views that civilization is marching toward Western-style democracy. Pakistan and the Philippines are reminders that effective governance is not assured “by just setting up a democratic constitution.” For him, the test of governance is: “Does it work?” “The millions of dispossessed in Asia,” he says, “care not and know not of theory. They want a better life.”

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Asked whom he admires, he names former French President Charles de Gaulle, “because he had tremendous guts,” Deng Xiaoping for executing China’s rise, and Winston Churchill, “because any other person would have given up.” While he expresses little interest in how he will be remembered, we are confident that history will count him among the grand masters of strategy.

We especially commend his penetrating thoughts to Secretary of State John Kerry’s new team and to their colleagues at the White House and the Pentagon.

Graham Allison is director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Robert D. Blackwill is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. They are co-authors of “Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World,” published Feb. 1 by MIT Press.